The Beach
The Beach
My wife and I are fortunate in that the home we own, on land that has been in the family off and on for over 250 years, fronts the Bay of Fundy, immediately north of Port Maitland Beach Provincial Park. Our almost 900 feet of ocean front is supplemented by over a half mile of salt-water pond frontage – as we own what was 100 years ago a commercial cranberry bog.
As a result, when the temperature gets higher, as it was this past week all across Canada and much of the US, we simply walk down to the “front yard”, and walk along our beach. Climate change is making these heat waves more frequent and hotter than ever, but we are buffered by the ocean’s relative coolness.
Still, it is concerning enough that last year we put in a heat pump as an addition to our heating system, because the pump is much more efficient than the electric baseboards we had installed 18 years ago when we built our home. In the past we would not have been thinking about the other feature of the heat pump – which is it also can be set to cool. Until the last couple of years – if it was warm in the house, we simply opened the windows. We did that yesterday afternoon, but the bedroom still went to 25° c , so last night we had the heat pump working and pushing cold air through our home.
Some people deny climate change. I would suggest that this is absolutely an actual effect of that change. Having come to the beach since I was very young, the change in temperature is readily apparent within my lifetime.
Norma and I walked the beach on a warm evening a day or so ago, and I took the image – a soft whooshing of the waves as they swirled up on the sand. The cooler breeze was also welcome, and not something forcing one to be wearing a windbreaker or sweatshirt as we did when I was a kid. We are fortunate to be living where we are, but the change is something we need to be aware of – and work to reduce however we can!
